And he is Chris Carney (seen above), the representative-elect from the 10th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. According to the New York Times' James Risen:In early 2002, Mr. Carney, a Naval Reserve officer, was assigned to work in a tiny intelligence unit created by Douglas J. Feith, then the under secretary of defense for policy, to search for links between terrorist groups and their possible state-sponsors, most notably Iraq. After the 2003 invasion, the Feith unit, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, was caught up in the debate over the Bush administration’s handling of prewar intelligence, and the office was investigated by a Senate committee and an independent presidential commission.In the summer and fall of 2002, Mr. Carney was at the center of the storm, briefing George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and Stephen …

5. Michael Oren's op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on November 16 which is only accessible to subscribers. So here are a few interesting quotes:Much like 1967, Israel faces a Middle Eastern leader who has repeatedly sworn to wipe it off the map, and to that end is assiduously trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Like Nasser, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can cripple Israel economically by keeping it in a state of alert, driving away foreign investment and tourism. In the absence of internationa…

Dr. Strauss from Stop the Spirit of Zossen emailed a long and very insightful indictment of Condi's role in the Iraq. According to Who Lost Iraq? which was published in US News: President Bush's acceptance of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation was intended to signal a change in course on Iraq. But many national security experts say that Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser at the time of the invasion, and the National Security Council share much of the blame for the problems in Iraq. "She did not perceive, and the National Security Council did not assess, what is in the United States' interests and what is in the interests of our enemies," says retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, an outspoken critic of the war who served as military assistant to Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser. "Once you make that basic mistake, there isn't any way to make the war come out good. It's all over.&…

I'm beginning to reassess just a little bit my excitement about the Baker Commission. It seems to me that "we" have been paying too much attention to the glass-is-half-full side of the "study group," that it's a victory for the "realists" and a defeat for the neocons and that it will give Bush a political cover for changing the course in Iraq, negotiate with Iran and Syria, etc. Well ... with all the "Not-so-fast" warnings with regard to withdrawal from Iraq coming even from some of the "good guys," I'm now concerned that Baker and Company are also going to provide a political cover to Democratic war critics who are hesitant about pressing Bush to get out of Mesopotamia. That could turn out to be the glass-is-half-empty side of Baker-Hamilton. Or is it going to be Baker-Hamilton/McCain-Lieberman, that is, a mushy bipartisan consensus in Congress in support for cosmetic changes in the Iraq policy and perhaps even backing for…

Michael Wolff explains inSurvivor: The White House Edition in the new issue of Vanity Fair. (It's not the piece about the neocons bad-mouthing Bush). It's the "third act" of a failing war and "everybody's positioning himself for the end."

Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush has campaigned in one Presidential contest (2004) and two Congressional races (2002 and 2004) as a victorious “War President.” Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have been swimming towards one electoral victory after another by comparing the White House occupant to Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt that was supposedly leading the American people and the Free World in a global struggle against the terrorist network led by Osama bin Ladin and (allegedly) Saddam Hussein and the Axis of Evil rogues nations (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to attack American and the West. The rising sense of nationalism that had swept America after 9/11 has helped Bush and the Republican Party rally the American people around the President, the Flag and the Judeo-Christian Civilization standing up against “Islamo-Fascism,” “wimpy” Europeans, and the “weak,”…

I'm a great fan of David Mamet's films and have seen The Spanish Prisoner and House of Games several times. So I was a little disappointed reading the review of Mamet's new book, The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews. According to the reviewer David Margolick, The book’s title refers to the character in the Passover Seder who distances himself from his people. “What does this ritual mean to you?” he asks tendentiously. For Mamet, he represents a disease among Jews, too many of whom are negative, weak, defeatist, ignorant and ungrateful. They hate their own history and traditions, loathe the state of Israel and are far too prone to trade their precious birthright for the closest cause or cult. Margolick didn't like the book and I agree with most of what he writes here:He has a peculiar knack for finding the most egregiously misbehaving Jews: Jews…

THAT the US midterm elections could result in the Democrats regaining control of Congress is causing some concern among pro-free trade proponents in Washington. After all, the Republicans on Capitol Hill have been leading the push for trade liberalisation in recent years, while many Democratic candidates for the House and the Senate have been campaigning on platforms that criticise globalisation with some of them favouring higher tariffs for imported goods.

Indeed, pro-free trade Republican Senators from Ohio, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Missouri are now facing strong challenges from Democratic candidates who tend to be more skeptical - of not protectionist - on the issue of free trade.

Hence the expectation in Washington is that the most likely consequence of Democratic control of Capitol Hill will be growing pressure a…

A VETERAN British political journalist who has covered all the US presidential races since 1992 is in Washington this week to report on the mid-term Congressional elections that will take place in less than 10 days.

'This is the first time in my career that my newspaper has assigned me to do stories on non-presidential elections in the US,' he told me over lunch in a restaurant on Capitol Hill.

'There is a feeling among my editors that although the elections on November 7th are basically of local nature, they could have a major impact on US foreign policy, and in particular on what's happening in Iraq,' he explained.

'My bosses seem to believe that if the Republicans end up receiving a major blow next month…

A global affairs analyst, journalist, blogger, and author. I am a senior analyst at Wikistrat, teach political science at the University of Maryland, and cover Washington for the Singapore Business Times. I also write for Ha'aretz, blog at The Huffington Post, post commentaries on The National Interest, and am a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
Formerly a research fellow in at the Cato Institute and the United Nations correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, I have published in American and international newspapers and magazines, and have been affiliated with think tanks and academic institutions.
I authored "Quagmire: America in the Middle East" (Cato Institute, 1992) and of "Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
I have a Ph.D. in international relations from American University, and graduated from Columbia University with MA degrees from the schools of journalism and international affairs and a certificate from the Middle East Institute. I also graduated with an MA degrree in communication and received a BA degree in political science from Hebrew University.